Fuji F300EXR vs F80EXR vs F200EXR – Early Comparison of Specs – A Review of Sorts

Fuji has again obsoleted a camera in only 6 months. This is so fast that I have to believe that they intend to milk consumers as quickly as humanly possible. Since I am certain to buy this one (trading the F80 back to Henrys), I've been triple dipped in only one year. That’s a bit of a rip off, it feels like. So anyway, there must be something cool with this camera. Let’s take a look, comparing it to the two (yes, that’s right) cameras that it replaces in their line up.

Starting at the top of the feature list as shown in the side-by-side comparison at www.dpreview.com:

1. Sensor size and resolution: The F300 uses a new generation of 1/2” sensor, which is the same size as the F80 and a fair bit smaller than that of the F200. It has a pixel density of 39mp per square centimeter, the same as the F80 and 56% higher than the density of the F200, despite all three having the same 12mp resolution. This means that we should expect image quality very close to the F80. This is acceptable, but it will be inferior to both the F200 and the F70 in bad light.
2. Zoom range: Wow, this sucker is packing a 15x zoom that starts very wide at 24mm effective. It goes all the way out to 360mm. This is longer than the already impressive 27-270 10x zoom in the F70 and downright massive when compared with the F200’s 28-140 5x zoom. This is great news if Fuji manages to curtail CA and distortions and blur. A tall order, but Fuji does make some of the better lenses on the planet.
3. AF: Here’s the biggest news of all. Fuji has pulled a rabbit out of a hat and has managed to create a form of quasi-phase detect auto focus, which means extremely fast focusing. At least twice as fast, and my guess is even faster than that if it works well at long zoom. In low light, the contrast focus will take over, but this trick promises to create the first small sensor cam that is useful for action photography in good light. That’ll blow some minds!
4. Aperture range: Good news / bad news … f/3.5 at the wide end, a fraction slower than the others (f/3.3) and f/5.3 (DPReview has this wrong at 5.6) at the long end, faster than the F80 (f/5.6)!! This is terrific design. The F200 is faster, but at less than half the reach, who cares?
5. Apertures: More good news. Fuji has now given us three apertures per focal length, and this is just about as good as any of the variable aperture compacts and bridges because of the narrow aperture range before diffraction makes a hash of images. The range at wide and long are f/3.5 – f/7.1 – f/10 and f/5.3 – f/11 – f/16 … which is an improvement over both the previous cams.
6. Max shutter speed: 1/2000s, same as the F80, and faster than the F200.
7. Flash range: The new pop up flash (away from the trigger finger, which will be seen by some as an improvement) is unfortunately quite underpowered. For some reason, Fuji took an already weak flash and made it weaker. And this in a cam with the longest zoom in a compact … this will be a problem.
8. Continuous shooting speed: Again, DPReview is confused, quoting different speeds for different cams. The 23 shot mode is faster than the F80, 4.5 fps versus 4.2. This is still a bit slower than the F200’s 5 fps. Note: The F200’s long period continuous (time lapse) is again missing from the F300 as it was from the F80.
9. Movie recording: 720p HD at 24fps, same as the F80. Both better than the SD video in the F200.
10. Orientation sensor: This handy device, first introduced in the F80, appears in the F300 as well. The F200 does not have it (nor does the F70.)
11. Storage: SD/SDHC, just like the F70 and F80. The F200 allows both xD and SD/SDHC but who cares. No loss there.
12. Internal storage: 40MB, same as F80. F200 has 48MB.
13. LCD size and resolution: DPReview reports an improved LCD (460k dots) over the other cams’ 230k dots … but the Fujifilm.ca web site shows 230k dots. Since the global Fuji web site says 460k dots, we’ll go with them. This will be excellent, but I hope that they fixed the blanking issue the LCD on the F80 has.
14. HDMI: Yes, same as F80.

Bottom line … the cam has several very nice features. The long and wide lens is superb, as is the fast AF (if real,) The three apertures promises to improve exposures by allowing faster shutter speeds.

The down sides are poor flash range and the fact that they kept 12mp on the sensor instead of dropping back to 10mp. If we are lucky, they’ll improve the jpeg engine’s saturation and custom white balance handling at high ISO. That works great in the F70 and just sucks in the F80.

As mentioned above … I plan to buy one of the first ones, replacing the F80. I will keep the F70 for some period, testing to see if this thing can replace both .

Six weeks and counting I suppose … meanwhile, you can watch this amusing video from YouTube showing the primary new features for this camera.

Sensor Sizes, Noise and Dynamic Range

Much ado is often made about sensor sizes. With regards to Fuji, we know that the 2/3” sensor in the S100fs is the largest consumer sensor on the market. Or was. Fuji have discontinued that model in favor of the S200EXR, which has the EXR sensor at 1/1.6” size. Is that a lot smaller? Can yo upicture the relative difference in size? Can you picture the actual sizes superimposed on one another?

And then we have the inevitable comparison made between the various sensor sizes. This comparison works on crop factors, the simplified definition of which is the relative size of the diagonal. Which itself more or less defines the required image circle size. Which defines the required glass size. And so on.

Now, we often get these fun debates about relative image quality. The best bridge cam has a 1/1.6” sensor today. How does this really compare in size to the Full Frame sensor, or the APS-C sensor?

Well, I’ve created a rather large chart to illustrate the differences. First, I show the relative difference between the four more popular sized sensors, all used in modern Fuji cams. The sizes are:

• 2/3” – S100fs
• 1/1.6” – S200EXR, F200EXR
• 1/2” – F70EXR, F80EXR
• 1/2.3” – HS10

Below the extremely enlarged relative sizes, I show the actual sizes (sized for the typical LCD monitor resolution of 100ppi) and you can easily see that the actual differences in small sensor sizes is vanishingly small. In fact, so are the sensors themselves. The largest of them still fits pretty much inside your pinky finger nail.

Note: you *must* click the image to see the large version. That gives you a true reading on the actual sizes under discussion. The actual sizes are, of course, relative :-)

Let’s examine this another way, just to put some concrete numbers to the visual impact of these differences. The difference in *area* from the largest sensor in use in what we must call “small sensor cameras” to the smallest sensor in common use today is a factor of 2.04 … the HS10’s 1/2.3” sensor versus the S100fs 2/3” sensor. (Note that the 1/2.5” sensor was popular over the last few years and is even smaller than the HS10 sensor, but the 1/2.3” Sony BiCMOS sensor is sweeping those older sensors off the table for performance reasons.)

These area size differences compared to the S100fs and the to a Full frame sensor are captured in a table:

So what does this all mean?

Well, it is fairly obvious that the two most popular Nikon sensor sizes are rather large when compared with even the largest small sensor. In fact, the table shows that the area difference ranges from 15 times to 30 times. So, where the S100fs can capture twice the light that the HS10 can (one doubling of size) … the D700 can capture 5 stops more light than the HS10 and 4 stops more light than the S100fs … making for a truly massive difference in image quality, as defined by noise and dynamic range, between the entire small sensor cluster and the large sensor cluster. And the differences pile up as sensitivity rises.

This is corroborated by comparing cameras on the DXOMark site. There, you can get a direct read on small sensors versus large sensors in RAW mode (i.e. ignoring jpeg engine differences.)

Here is an example … a D700 (FF sensor) against a D90 (APS-C sensor) against a Canon G11 (1/1.6” sensor) against a Panasonic with a 1/2.3” sensor against an S100fs (2/3” sxensor.)

First, noise.

So we see that the sensor sizes are tracking very well here. In fact, if you look at crop factors versus stops of noise difference, you can see a strong correlation. The laws of physics are speaking here.

The graph is straight forward. The middle two lines are the 2/3 and 1/1.6 sensors. And the differences are negligible. No reason to get twisted knickers over it *when shooting RAW.* The 1/2.3 sensor is about 1 stop down from that. The APS-C sensor is 2.5 stops above the best small sensor. and the FF sensor is 3.5 stops. Tracks the 4x crop factor nicely.

In plain English now … you are shooting a birthday party for your kids. You want to get a great shot of the blowing face lit by the candles on the birthday cake. This is going to require 1600 or 3200 ISO.

Well … the smaller sensors are well below the cur off for excellent image quality of 30dB. Thus, you will be hammering the image with noise reduction. On the other hand, the D700 is still at that magic level at 3200 ISO. The D90 at 1600 ISO. So if you nail the exposure with either, you get a frameable karge print. With the smaller sensor, you will be lucky to score a decent WEB image.

Now … dynamic range.

This one is not quite as predictable. In a straight up shooting war, the two sensor size groups cluster quite tightly. And the clusters themselves are about 2 to 3 stops apart. Tracking a little less closely than you expect from the crop factors.

But … this is only part of the story. When you actually shoot, say, the D300 against the D700 (I do that), you find that the D700 has significantly cleaner shadow detail. Sometimes the difference is astounding. This is reflected in the latitude for improper exposure. Underexpose with the D300 and you will suffer somewhat. Underexpose the D700 and you will not really notice a drop in quality (even though it is there.) And underexpose a small sensor … well, suffer baby.

So these sensor size clusters … the big ones against the little ones … they matter. The image quality is indisputably better when the sensor is bigger, all other things being equal (and they generally are, despite the hopes and dreams of the staunch defenders of the small sensor.) Scotty said it best, when he shouted “Ye canna change the laws of physics!”

P.S. What makes the EXR sensors special is that they will combine adjacent “like colored” pixels to form a sensor of half the resolution, which drops the pixel density drastically. This, in turn, changes the nature of the noise and generally allows for much less noise reduction, with the attendant dramatic improvement in shadow details and low contrast details. The chroma noise also improves, although it is tough to say why. But the F70EXR specifically is almost chroma noise free in EXR modes … and that’s pretty amazing …

The TAO of Cameras

Think about it.

Morris Jensen Paints Me!

Well, one of my images actually.

I’ve had a conversation with Morris on the DPChallenge site, one of the better challenge sites around in my opinion. He asked permission to paint one of my images, and I asked for an attribution on his site where the painting is displayed. I must say that I am really, really pleased with the result.

Here’s a small version of his image:

The image on his site is in the hiking and camping section: http://www.morrisjensen.com/index.html

My original image:

And a Draganized version:

The Dragan version hung in the lobby gallery at my office building for a year, and several people asked for copies of this image in 12x18 size to frame. It’s quite popular.

This was shot on my first walk in the woods with the D300 and new Nikon 300 F4 AFS. I shot from tripod, a Feisol 3471 with Markins M20L ball head. I was very pleased with this result.

And I’m very pleased to have Morris paint it. Go have a look.

Use a High Quality, Hardware Calibrated Monitor!

This subject comes up so often on the DPReview site that there should be a sticky post at the top level explaining the issues with commenting on tone or color when your monitor sucks. It’s just silly to tell someone they have bad tone or color when your monitor is cheap and you don’t calibrate.

A particularly vocal (and often obnoxious) “dude” on the Fuji Talk Forum has again brought this specter to the fore, so I thought it time to add my $0.02.

A 10 year old cathode-ray tube  (CRT) is asking for problems as they lose their ability to retain focus after some years and people end up posting terribly over-sharpened images. Yuck. I also found that it was pretty hard to adjust the white and black points unless the monitor was fairly expensive. Perhaps a hardware calibrator can take care of that, but I suggest amateurs just bite the bullet and get a good LCD panel.

Now we need to define “good:” where LCD panels are concerned. A panel in use for gaming can be of any quality … every panel made today is probably excellent for that task. They are all lightning fast and most are bright and vibrant and of course accept a HDMI port and sport full HD panels.

Unfortunately, most panels got good and fast and cheap by using TN technology, which is the lowest form of panels … 6 bits of color information and some fancy dithering algorithms to fake out a 32bit color space. The angle of view is so narrow that you can see color changes at the edges without moving your head. It is impossible to see uniform color across a TN panel from normal working distance. And they do not calibrate well at all in my experience. So, for photography the typical panel available today is a very bad choice. If you are using a TN panel, I assert that you have no right whatsoever to comment on someone else’s colors or tones because you have no clue what they really are.

So if 98% of panels are unsuitable for photography, are we not lost?

No … there are still many panels around that can do the job. But they will definitely cost you more than the el-cheapos. There are three technologies that are vastly better than TN for photographic editing. They are (in order from lowest to highest quality overall) MVA, PVA and IPS. I use an older NEC MVA panel and can tell you that it calibrates beautifully. Colors and tones are uniform across the screen and I can hold me head anywhere and still see them accurately.

IPS is the best technology and happens to be the technology used for most Apple panels, which makes sense since Apple has a strong niche in the arts. There is a newer and cheaper variant that is apparently also good for photography – eIPS. Seen in some cheaper monitors … but still not cheap like TN panels.

Here is an example of how my two panels render colors and tones … note that you may or may not see these as I see them, after all you are seeing them on your own monitor. But you will be able to easily assess the *relative* differences between these two panels as seen by my D700, and that’s the point of this demonstration. The TN panel is on the left and the MVA panel is on the right.

So how can you tell how well your panel is doing?

I use the lagom.nl site, which provides the best LCD monitor test images I have yet seen.

You can verify that your contrast is set correctly … here is their explanation:

The following image shows scales of linearly increasing RGB values. On a good monitor, you should see roughly equal steps in brightness over the full range from 1 to 32, and in all colors. Bar 1 should be visible. A bad monitor will not show the leftmost few rectangles, will not show a difference between the rightmost few, or shows a relatively large jump between numbers 31 and 32.

And here is a small snapshot of the step-wedges on the page:

There are pages to aid in gamma calibration (but please, do yourself a favor and get a hardware calibrator) and to verify white and black points. Here is a snippet from the black point page so you can see you your monitor is doing in the lowest tones. On my MVA panel I can see every tone from1 and upwards.

But what about white point? Can you see the top shades or are they pure white, indistinguishable form the surrounding 255?

So go to the site and check every aspect of your monitor. If you can’t see all tones or if your gamma is way off, then get yourself a hardware calibrator. It’s just too hard to guess … your eye compensates too easily.

I use the Huey Pro calibrator and it works well for multiple monitors. It reads the ambient light and can change the brightness of the monitor to compensate. There is no reason to go up in price as there are plenty of article that suggest that the accuracy of all the consumer colorimeters is similar and that a real step up requires serious money in both the monitor and the colorimeter (the name of the device used for calibration.)

Click on the following to see the Huey Pro for just over 80 bucks at the time of writing. The Spider Express 3 is not much more but does not do dual monitors, so watch out for that!

And here are some very good IPS panels in order by increasing cost that start quite inexpensive to help you in your search …

Fix a Clogged Canon Print Head

My MP520 is a wonderful machine for general purpose printing. It scans and copies and the ink is a reasonable cost. Especially when purchased on eBay from places like 123ink.ca …

But sometimes the print heads will block permanently. In my case, the black ink suddenly stopped coming out. Colors printed perfectly but black was blank. I tried everything, including buying a new ink cartridge.

Well, it turns out that the head was just clogged and that cleaning it is as easy a task as you could imagine.

What I did (thanks to the many articles on the Internet):

1. Raise the whole scanning bed up until the arm drops to hold it up. The ink tanks will move to the center.
   
2. Remove the four ink cartridges and place in a lunch-sized baggy, I recommend you put them in their in the same configuration you see here as that makes reassembly a trivial and error-free operation.
   
3. Prop the inks up somewhere exactly as they sit in the tank. This will keep the ink flowing properly once reinstalled.
4. Lift the arm on the left of the ink tanks, as shown in the imagei n step 2.
5. Once lifted, the holder at the back that contains the print heads will be loose. Grab the top and tilt it gently forward until it lifts out.
6. In a container (I used my bathroom sink) fill with very hot water and some Ammonia based window cleaner. Drop the print head holder into the water and let soak for several hours.
7. Take the heads out of the water (you will see the water filled with ink) and place right side up onto some folded paper towel or tissue paper. Make that thick as a surprising amount of ink will run from the color heads.
8. Reinstall the heads and add the ink tanks back.
9. Recharge the heads – I used one cleaning cycle to do that.
10. Print a nozzle check pattern. Mine came out perfect.

So I saved myself the price of a new printer. Try it, it’s a simple job and the printer prints like new again.